My Mom raised me never to be dependent on a man, any man… (see previous postings about my less than perfect father)… I received daily words of advise such as…Don’t quit work after having children as you want to be married by choice not because you are financially dependent. You can’t be the perfect mother, wife, employee and housekeeper….  Hire someone to keep your house clean, it is the cost of sanity.

Mom was a feminist raising three kids on her own in a middle class neighbourhood, surrounded by June Cleavers. In my elementary school there were only three of us with single parent families and one of the three didn’t arrive until Grade six. I suspect not all of those parents were happily married but they all appeared to be from my vantage point.

The wedding last night was beautiful. It went off without a hitch. The ceremony was in a grassy field surrounded by fields of potato crops. The couple wrote their own vows. Wise decision.  That vow we said about “in sickness or in health” was a doozey!!  The dinner dance followed in the decorated barn..

As the couple said their vows, I went back in time to the night we stood before our friends and family at our wedding

It also was a beautiful night and went off without a hitch. I had wanted to get married at the mansion at a nearby University but I didn’t want to wait the two years necessary to get a Saturday night booking.. So we got married on a Wednesday, 32 years ago tomorrow.. I know!! A Wednesday!  We are home on the island and intend on spending our anniversary drinking wine and tending to my blistered feet.. It isn’t easy to dance barefoot on a barn floor like the old days.

I have already posted the story of our (wedding rings). My Mom loves E and couldn’t have asked for a better son-in-law but in the beginning she had her doubts.. On our wedding day as I was getting dressed and giving his ring to my sister/Maid of Honor to bring to the wedding my Mother said her immortal words of marriage advice.

When he leaves you, and he will.. make sure he gives

this ring back